Artificial Intelligence | Applications
What is artificial intelligence (AI)?
Artificial intelligence allows machines to replicate the capabilities of the human mind. From the development of self-driving cars to the proliferation of smart assistants like Alexa, AI is a growing part of everyday life. As a result, many tech companies across various industries are investing in artificially intelligent technologies.
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How does AI work?
As the hype around AI has accelerated, vendors have been scrambling to promote how their products and services use AI. Often what they refer to as AI is simply one component of AI, such as machine learning. AI requires a foundation of specialized hardware and software for writing and training machine learning algorithms. No one programming language is synonymous with AI, but a few, including Python, R and Java, are popular.
In general, AI systems work by ingesting large amounts of labeled training data, analyzing the data for correlations and patterns, and using these patterns to make predictions about future states. In this way, a chatbot that is fed examples of text chats can learn to produce lifelike exchanges with people, or an image recognition tool can learn to identify and describe objects in images by reviewing millions of examples.
AI programming focuses on three cognitive skills: learning, reasoning and self-correction.
Learning processes. This aspect of AI programming focuses on acquiring data and creating rules for how to turn the data into actionable information. The rules, which are called algorithms, provide computing devices with step-by-step instructions for how to complete a specific task.
Reasoning processes. This aspect of AI programming focuses on choosing the right algorithm to reach a desired outcome.
Self-correction processes. This aspect of AI programming is designed to continually fine-tune algorithms and ensure they provide the most accurate results possible.
Why is artificial intelligence important?
AI has many uses — from boosting vaccine development to automating detection of potential fraud.
AI private market activity saw a record-setting year in 2021, according to CB Insights, with global funding up 108 percent compared to 2020. Because of its fast-paced adoption, AI is making waves in a variety of industries.
Business Insider Intelligence’s 2022 report on AI in banking found more than half of financial services companies already use AI solutions for risk management and revenue generation. The application of AI in banking could lead to upwards of $400 billion in savings.
As for medicine, a 2022 World Health Organization report noted that while integrating AI into the healthcare field comes with challenges, the technology “holds great promise,” as it could lead to benefits like more informed health policy and improvements in the accuracy of diagnosing patients.
Artificial neural networks and deep learning artificial intelligence technologies are quickly evolving, primarily because AI processes large amounts of data much faster and makes predictions more accurately than humanly possible.
While the huge volume of data being created on a daily basis would bury a human researcher, AI applications that use machine learning can take that data and quickly turn it into actionable information. As of this writing, the primary disadvantage of using AI is that it is expensive to process the large amounts of data that AI programming requires.
Advantages
- Good at detail-oriented jobs;
- Reduced time for data-heavy tasks;
- Delivers consistent results; and
- AI-powered virtual agents are always available.
Disadvantages
- Expensive;
- Requires deep technical expertise;
- Limited supply of qualified workers to build AI tools;
- Only knows what it’s been shown; and
- Lack of ability to generalize from one task to another.
Strong AI vs. weak AI
AI can be categorized as either weak or strong.
- Weak AI, also known as narrow AI, is an AI system that is designed and trained to complete a specific task. Industrial robots and virtual personal assistants, such as Apple’s Siri, use weak AI.
- Strong AI, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), describes programming that can replicate the cognitive abilities of the human brain. When presented with an unfamiliar task, a strong AI system can use fuzzy logic to apply knowledge from one domain to another and find a solution autonomously. In theory, a strong AI program should be able to pass both a Turing Test and the Chinese room test.
What are the 4 types of artificial intelligence?
Arend Hintze, an assistant professor of integrative biology and computer science and engineering at Michigan State University, explained in a 2016 article that AI can be categorized into four types, beginning with the task-specific intelligent systems in wide use today and progressing to sentient systems, which do not yet exist. The categories are as follows:
- Type 1: Reactive machines. These AI systems have no memory and are task specific. An example is Deep Blue, the IBM chess program that beat Garry Kasparov in the 1990s. Deep Blue can identify pieces on the chessboard and make predictions, but because it has no memory, it cannot use past experiences to inform future ones.
- Type 2: Limited memory. These AI systems have memory, so they can use past experiences to inform future decisions. Some of the decision-making functions in self-driving cars are designed this way.
- Type 3: Theory of mind. Theory of mind is a psychology term. When applied to AI, it means that the system would have the social intelligence to understand emotions. This type of AI will be able to infer human intentions and predict behavior, a necessary skill for AI systems to become integral members of human teams.
- Type 4: Self-awareness. In this category, AI systems have a sense of self, which gives them consciousness. Machines with self-awareness understand their own current state. This type of AI does not yet exist.
Applications of Artificial Intelligence
As a result of AI, online shopping has gotten a lot more interesting than ever. The algorithms create a list of the products that fit the user criteria of being useful or similar, that the users might be interested in looking at and potentially buying in similar and different categories.
Marketing
Enhanced photos
Google highly relies on artificial Intelligence. Google Photos is one such dimension. It uses AI technology to let users look up photos of particular people in their contact lists or tags. It identifies the faces of different people in your pictures and enables you to tag them or search accordingly.
Healthcare
The extent to which artificial Intelligence has impacted the healthcare sector cannot be put into words. It has helped patients all over the world. Right from the diagnosis of the disease to performing surgery, we indeed have come a long way.
Surveillance
Surveillance is something that deserves a special mention for we know how much important it is. Artificial Intelligence can be trained using supervised exercises, developing security algorithms, identification protocols, and much more. With this, AI can identify potential threats and warn human security officers to investigate further.
Self-driving cars
Who cannot think about Google’s self-driving car project to Tesla’s “autopilot” feature when comes to artificial intelligence? Well, all this is just an indication of how AI has carved a niche for itself in the automotive industry.
Agriculture
Today, we have reached a stage wherein agricultural issues such as climate change, population growth, and food security concerns are no longer something to bother about. We have come up with innovative approaches to improve crop yield as a result of AI.
Social media
The prominence of artificial intelligence in social media cannot be merely put into words. Out of the many areas that it caters to, the most common use of AI in social media is for face verification and to detect facial features.
Banking and Finance
The financial sector has seen a lot of technological advancements. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence. As a result of this, a lot of banks and financial institutions have already adopted AI-based systems to provide customer support and detect anomalies and credit card fraud.
Gaming
Artificial Intelligence has transformed the gaming sector exceptionally and we can only thank the technological advancements we are blessed with. Over some time, Artificial Intelligence has become an integral part of the gaming industry and has evolved to become one of the biggest accomplishments of AI in the gaming industry.
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